Mozilla's ex-CEO on 'Innovating Differently'

I was with some Microsoft execs last night, at one of their Startup Accelerator events, where the conversation turned again to the many challenges of promoting innovation at companies large, and small. (You know how MSFT prefers to tackle this –cha ching!)
The innovation dilemma will be your greatest challenge — once you get your business model to work. To wit, we highly recommend this Q&A that McKinsey did in January with Mitchell Baker, the Netscape and AOL veteran who served as CEO of Mozilla until January of this year.

Baker talks candidly about new models for managing innovation, especially “the power of the participatory, open-source model” that she used over the last decade at Mozilla to innovate cheaply, rapidly and effectively, namely by leveraging talent outside her company.

McKinsey writes that Baker deftly managed to leverage external talent “…not just for creative ideas, but also to develop products and make decisions. The result: Mozilla’s Firefox browser, with 150 million users, has become a rival of Microsoft’s market-leading Internet Explorer.” This is a model to follow: Firefox now has a 15% share of the browser market in the U.S., and higher elsewhere.

OK, so Mozilla is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the non-profit Mozilla Foundation — which probably makes the company culture more conducive to “collaborative efforts” that if it were well, Microsoft. But in a business culture where IP, “rights, claims and infringement” are constantly contested for monetary gain, McKinsey asked Baker (a former lawyer for Netscape, to which Mozilla also traces its roots,) how she was able to make its unique process work so well for Mozilla for more than 10 years. Here’s she had to say:

A key point is for people to “own” what they are doing, not in a financial or legal sense but in an emotionally committed sense that gives them a chance to decide, “I’m excited about this. I want to do something. I want to write an extension. I want to go tell people how to do this.” And it also gives people the success and the relationships to go back out and do more.